Diocese of Orange leaders enabled the sexual abuse of Catholic children
by accepting or keeping known pedophiles in parish work, by ignoring warnings
about abusive priests and by misleading parishioners, a review of church
records shows.

Fifteen once-sealed personnel files, made public Tuesdayas part of a
record $100 million settlement of child sexual-abuse cases, provide a
window into the minds of men of the cloth in Orange County from the 1960s
to 1990s. A judge ruled the diocese must release other secret documents,
including psychological reports and correspondence between church leaders,
within a week.

FOUND A CAUSE: Joelle Casteix listens
to Bishop Tod Brown during a news conference after the non-monetary
component of the trial Tuesday.
Daniel A. Anderson, The Orange County Register

The details of many of the cases have been revealed in lawsuits and previous
news stories: boys sodomized by priests they trusted; a high school girl
impregnated and given a sexually transmitted disease.

“IT WAS WRONG”: Diocese of
Orange Bishop Tod Brown speaks to reporters and child-abuse complainants
at a news conference in Los Angeles on Tuesday. He said responses
on the part of the diocese were inadequate and failed.
Daniel A. Anderson, The Orange County Register

But other cases are new: A man who alleges he was molested for three
years by a priest who later died of AIDS. That man received the highest
settlement of any of the 90 victims: $3.7 million.

The files also reveal the extent to which diocesan bishops, chancellors
and other church leaders routinely forgave priests for abusing children,
paid for counseling, then welcomed them back to pastoral work - sometimes
two or three times.

Former diocesan leaders have apologized for keeping accused clergy in
ministry, saying they believed at the time they were doing the right thing.
But in a news conference Tuesday, Orange Bishop Tod Brown acknowledged
that those explanations were insufficient.

"The information contained in these documents is a painful testimony
to the abuse suffered by the victims and the inadequate and failed responses
on the part of the diocese in some cases in these years," Brown said.

"No amount of explanation about the past can stand in the light
of what we now know about the sexual abuse of minors, nor can it assuage
the pain inflicted on them and their families. It was wrong. Now, we must
do all we can to heal."

The thousands of pages of confidential church records were a crucial
component of the January settlement with 90 individuals who say they were
abused by 45 priests, nuns, lay ministers, lay teachers, a brother and
a school caretaker. The records include letters, memos and handwritten
notes that detail church leaders' knowledge and discussions with the priests
who served under them.

The diocese initially agreed not to oppose release of records it had
revealed during settlement negotiations. But in the past week, the diocese
began to raise a series of legal objections that would have scaled back
the number of documents released.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Peter D. Lichtman ruled Tuesday that
the diocese cannot scale back its document release and ordered the diocese
to go even further, releasing psychological reports and letters between
church leaders that it previously argued were confidential under privilege
laws.

Five priests and three lay people had objected to the release of their
own files, citing privacy rights, and Lichtman ruled Tuesday that he did
not have the authority to release them. He left the door open for plaintiff's
attorneys to appeal that ruling.

Sex offenses no bar to parish work

The files show that diocesan officials knew that at least three priests
they accepted to work in Orange County had previously been in trouble
for sexual abuse of children in other dioceses.

Take the case of the Rev. Siegfried Widera.

Diocese
officials have said they knew Widera had "a moral problem having
to do with a boy in school" before he came to Orange County in 1976.

But the records released on Tuesday show, for the first time, that church
leaders knew much more than that.

Widera's file shows he was twice accused of abusing boys in Milwaukee
and criminally convicted in 1973 of molestation. He was barred from working
in Wisconsin parishes. [For two very different descriptions of these facts,
see Widera's
own 10/16/85 Personal History Sheet (p. 6) and Milwaukee archbishop
Cousin's
12/20/76 letter to Orange chancellor Driscoll.]

When he came to visit his brother in Costa Mesa in 1976, the then-Archbishop
of Milwaukee, William Cousins, called Bishop William Johnson and suggested
that Widera might work in Orange County. [The call is referred to in Cousin's
12/20/76 letter.]

In a December 1976 letter
to Diocese of Orange Chancellor Michael Driscoll, Cousins wrote of Widera's
"moral problem" and said that the priest had a second such incident.
He added "there would seem to be no great risk in allowing (Widera)
to return to pastoral work."

That same year, Widera began abusing Orange County boys, some as young
as 9, according to lawsuits later filed in Orange County.

In 1985, Driscoll was told that someone witnessed Widera molest four
or five boys in a swimming pool.

Two months later, in September 1985, Driscoll received a call from a
woman in Yorba Linda who said her son had been touched inappropriately
when Widera tucked him into bed.

The diocese removed Widera and sent him to a treatment facility in New
Mexico.

As reports of abuse by Widera began to pile up at Marywood, the diocesan
headquarters, Widera disappeared. In May 2002, prosecutors in Wisconsin
filed nine counts of child molestation against him. Five months later,
Orange County prosecutors filed 33 counts.

In May 2003, police found Widera in Mexico. While being questioned by
Mexican police, he fell to his death from the third-floor balcony of a
Mazatlan hotel.

This year, the diocese paid $17.7 million to nine men who alleged they
were abused by Widera.

Earlier this year, one of Widera's victims, David Guerrero, told the
Register how his life had been derailed by the years of abuse that began
when he was 9.

"I needed help, and no one was there to help me," Guerrero
said.

David Guerrero

Driscoll, who is now the Bishop of Boise, declined to be interviewed
for this story.

But earlier this month, he posted a lengthy apology on his diocesan Web
site.

"I am ashamed that this happened," Driscoll wrote. "It
is hard for me to understand today how we could not have seen what was
happening to the children."

Second and third chances

Church leaders believed that abusive priests could be cured through treatment,
and often ignored warnings from parishioners that suggested a different
truth, the records show.

Like Widera, the Rev. Eleuterio Ramos had already been
in trouble before coming to Orange County - a lawsuit claims he molested
an 8-year-old boy at Resurrection Church in East Los Angeles.

Documents from his personnel files show that the Archdiocese of Los Angeles
sent him for psychological treatment - "this
care was suggested by the district attorney." He was then sent
to Orange County, where he became a parish priest at Immaculate Heart
of Mary in Santa Ana.

By late 1979, mothers and teachers were complaining to Bishop Johnson
about Ramos' behavior.

Driscoll's
notes from a phone conversation sketch the incident: "Boys taken
to rectory ... some drinking ..."

Lawsuits settled by the church are more explicit: Ramos was accused of
taking boys to drive-in movies and motels, giving them alcohol and pornography,
then orally copulating them.

Diocese officials sent Ramos to Maryland for treatment in December 1979.
[In fact, Ramos was sent to Rev. Michael R. Peterson's St. Luke Institute
at Marsalin in Holliston MA, which was a clinic run by Sy. Luke Institute
of Suitland MD. The earliest evidence of this arrangement is a 12/3/79
letter from Peterson to Bishop Johnson.]

In April 1980, Bishop William R. Johnson revealed his own feelings about
Ramos in a letter
to the director of the treatment center. Johnson called Ramos "a
fine priest, zealous and generous hearted. ... He will be returning to
the Diocese early next month and we look forward to having him back with
us," Johnson wrote.

This 1982 note
from the desk of then-Chancellor Michael Driscoll describes a complaint
against Ramos.

According to lawsuits, Ramos would continue to abuse boys for the next
five years, in one case allowing other men to join in the abuse in a Mexican
hotel room.

This unsigned 1985 document
describes a phone call in which the Rev. Eleuterio “Al”
Ramos admitted that he had “slipped” and had an incident
with a 17-year-old boy. Ramos left the parish days later.

Finally, a boy told his parents.

Bishop Johnson arranged for Ramos to be placed at a church in Mexico.
The Diocese continued to give Ramos a monthly stipend of $500 until 1992,
records show.

Parishioners who had been warning Driscoll and Johnson about Ramos for
years remained angry at how long it took for Ramos to be removed.

"The Diocese took their time in doing it. ... The Bishop or Msgr.
Driscoll (told) me they needed four people to corroborate our statements,"
wrote
a woman whose name was blacked out.

Ramos eventually confessed to police that he molested more than 20 boys.

He died in 2003.

The diocese reached a secret settlement with two people in 1993 and 1994.
Earlier this year, it settled with 11 more - for $16.6 million.

Missed warnings

Church leaders repeatedly downplayed complaints logged against some priests,
the records show. The files contradict public statements made by the diocese
about at least five accused abusers.

In the case of the Rev. Michael Pecharich, the founding
pastor of San Francisco Solano Church in Rancho Santa Margarita, documents
released Tuesday indicate the diocese received multiple complaints of
inappropriate behavior by Pecharich before he was removed from ministry
three years ago.

In March 2002, Brown announced the implementation of a "zero-tolerance
policy" against known molesters.

"Although there have been no further instances of misconduct, nor
any new accusations, the Diocese has taken the position that any priest
who was ever involved in this kind of behavior cannot serve in ministry,"
Brown said.

But the records released Tuesday show that the diocese had numerous other
reports of behavior by Pecharich that left onlookers "scandalized,"
in the words of one parent.

The records show Msgr. John Urell met with Pecharich about one interaction
in August 1995, in which a boy complained about the priest's hugs. [The
victim was a 28-year-old seminarian in 1995 when he wrote his complaint
letter and met with Pecharich and Chancellor Urell, who took notes.
The victim was 15 or 16 years old during the counseling sessions at which
Pecharich hugged and kissed him.]

"He had no [']intentions['] in anything he had done ... he is more
aware now about how actions are perceived; and how others can 'experience'
something in a different way than it was intended," Urell wrote.

In a separate incident [in fact, this is the same complaint], one young
man alleged Pecharich hugged and kissed him on the cheek during counseling
sessions while Pecharich was a pastor at San Antonio de Padua Catholic
Church in Anaheim Hills.

"It is true he did not molest me, but his behavior with me was,
to say the least, inappropriate. He crossed sexual boundaries, and that
was wrong," the youth wrote. [See again the seminarian's complaint
letter.]

While Pecharich was at San Francisco Solano, the diocese also received
complaints that Pecharich "put his hands in the back pocket of a
young boy and stood there talking to him," according to a March 1996
letter
to Bishop Norm McFarland.

"He approached our son and pulled hair off his leg and told him
to put it on his chest," the parent wrote. "We won't begin to
speculate what motivates Father Michael's inappropriate conduct. ... Our
children were scandalized and shocked a priest would behave in such a
manner."

Brown said Tuesday that he did not see Pecharich's file before 2002,
the year Pecharich was removed.

After Pecharich's removal, two other people came forward and said they
were molested by Pecharich. One parishioner
wrote to ask why Pecharich was allowed to remain as long as he was.

"We see that Mr. Pecharich is gone. What is clearly missing is an
explanation for why he was ever allowed to come into contact with our
children when his background and sickness were known to the [D]iocese,"
a parishioner wrote Brown. "Who made such decisions? Moreover, if
the men who allowed Mr. Pecharich to be our priest are still empowered
in the Diocese, how can we truly be certain that such breaches of trust
will not again take place?"

Pecharich could not be reached for comment.

Bishop Brown reiterated Tuesday that the diocese has changed the way
it handles reports of sexual abuse.

"These stories are about what was wrong then. The release of these
documents is about getting it right now," he said.